Besieged by internal problems and its principal hated by the public, the ruling Lakas-Kampi party has chosen Gilbert Teodoro, President Arroyo’s defense secretary, to be its standard-bearer in the 2010 elections.
In today’s vote, 45 Lakas-Kampi officials flushed Bayani Fernando’s presidential ambitions down the nearest pink urinal. The MMDA chair — infamously known for his pink urinals and pink walk bridges and for throwing gasoline at street vendors’ wares — got only five votes. Fernando has said he will bolt out of the ruling party if he were not chosen.
If Fernando indeed quits the Lakas-Kampi, it would create worse problems for the administration. Erstwhile Lakas leaders like former President Fidel V. Ramos and Jose de Venecia have spurned the merger of Lakas-Christian-Muslim Democrats and Kampi. The Lakas “originals” have even gone to the Comelec to question the merger.
The bigger news actually is Vice President Noli de Castro’s rejection of the invitation to join Lakas-Kampi. De Castro has figured quite strongly in most surveys and seemed to be the administration’s only hope to win the 2010 elections. Teodoro meanwhile is a perennial cellar-dweller, getting only a fraction of one-percent in most voter preference surveys.
De Castro’s move can only mean that the vice president knows fully well how Arroyo’s “kiss of death” can doom his political career.
It would be a coup for Senator Manny Villar, who will carry the Nacionalista Party’s colors in 2010, if he gets De Castro as running mate. Villar can portray his tandem with De Castro as a national unity ticket. Be that as it may, De Castro still has much explaining to do to the public why he sticked it out with Arroyo for the longest time.
The ruling party’s choice of Teodoro is unimpressive. The defense secretary has continuously sided with hawks in the military on national security issues, opting to mostly use military power and might to confront the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines. Under his watch, the Arroyo administration continued a policy of terror against the New People’s Army — and legal, unarmed activists. Militarist solutions have long been proven as failures in solving the root causes of the long-festering armed conflicts in the country.
Chosen as presidential candidate on the very day the nation marks the historic Senate vote in 1991 that booted out the US military bases, Teodoro likewise represents zero change in terms of foreign policy, especially US-Philippine relations. He betrays his colonial and neocolonial mindset in his rabid defense of the onerous and unfair Visiting Forces Agreement, and displayed his pro-US credentials in a speech before the right-wing Heritage Foundation in Washington DC last week. If we wish to have an independent, self-respecting foreign policy and an end to foreign intervention in our internal affairs, Teodoro cannot be our choice.
That is not though to say that other presidential candidates are not Amboys. It is just downright insulting that Teodoro predicated his coronation as Lakas-Kampi candidate with a most shameless display of pro-Americanism at a time when our people want profound change in government. We want a clean government that serves Filipino interests, first and foremost.
The biggest hurdle for Teodoro is his association with Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the most hated president of the Philippines. He is the choice of Arroyo’s party and he for sure would have his hands raised by Arroyo when he is publicly endorsed and proclaimed. That is the worst thing that could happen to any candidate this time.
The least Teodoro could do now is to resign his post as defense secretary. He should not use his post as overseer of the entire armed forces for his own personal political benefit. He also needs to devote his full time to making a political miracle of raising his survey rating from a fraction of one percent to at least 33 percent in order to win in 2010.
How he could do that being the chosen candidate of Lakas-Kampi and with Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s “kiss of death” is everyone’s guess.
I guess, Teodoro is just insistent (very brave, i.e.) on being a candidate because GMA is supporting him despite being a virtually unknown (or should i say, notorious?) in the Philippines. He might have been assured of winning, with the possible brownouts next year (and the other things in between)??? what a coincidence, ei?!
juSt be diFferent..
hope
hiS
not
like
the
others..